Stay Frosty
by TeamUnitedNerds
Summary: This story explores the origins of Frost, and how he gained control of both a Peace-Keeping Organization and a gang of space pirates.


Frigor chose to remain in his second form, not because of its power, but what it represented. It was strong, sturdy, and large, but in a way that seemed more fit to protect than to harm. It didn't have the impish appearance of his diminutive first form, nor the monstrous features of his third, nor the unrestrained power of his true form. His race often saw their transformations as power-ups, but not Frigor. His array of forms was more like a wardrobe to him, and the second one was the one that suited him the most. It made his shoulders broad, his horns tall and proud, and it did little to conceal the wrinkles on his aging purple face, but out of all of his forms, it was the one he considered his true self.

"Frost, here," he said, his voice full of grit, but also warmth. Listening to it felt like sinking one's toes into soft sand, cooled by the sea and warmed by the sun.

He dropped a bag of coins in front of Frost. The fabric was thin, so Frost could see the silvery glimmer of the money inside. He lifted the bag up, and placed it in his hand, shaking it up and down, listening for the jingle, as he compulsively did every time he received his allowance.

Frost made little effort to hide his disappointment, as his young face scrunched up with exaggerated revulsion.

"I know it's not as much as last time," his father said, putting his hand on his son's back, which was almost as large as Frost's entire torso. "But you can't make as much money preventing war if there aren't as many wars to prevent. The fact that my profits have declined is a good sign for the universe. You're young, and you probably don't understand that yet. You're probably just mad at me."

Frost turned his head away from his father, bringing up his hand, summoning a holographic display. He brushed through the image, bringing up a shopping catalog. He bought himself a toy laser gun. It wasn't a toy in the sense that it didn't fire a laser, the catalog promised that it would indeed produce a beam, it was just that the laser would be completely harmless to anything with a power level higher than the average insect.

Frigor sighed, reaching into the pocket of his armor, and placing another handful of coins in front of his son. "Take these," he said. "These were supposed to go to my personal account, but I can live without them." Frost slapped his father's hand, sending the silver coins clattering towards the ground.

"Frost!" his father said, raising his voice, although that did little to intimidate Frost, as Frost knew his father could never display genuine anger, not towards him.

"How dare you! I received those coins as payment for saving a planet and its people after they were ravaged by war! To cast them aside is to cast aside their sacrafice! Pick them up, and go to your room! And, the next time I'm called in to protect a planet, you're coming with me. Maybe then, you'll have some appreciation for the well-being of someone besides yourself."

Frigor's face collapsed into a guilty look that did more to show he was sorry than any verbal apology possibly could. Frost didn't look offended. He knew his father was right.

Frost picked up the coins, one by one, flashing his father a spiteful glare with each one he collected. Once he was done, he placed them in his father's open palm. For a split-second, the evil, toxic part of his mind suggested throwing them onto the floor again, or right into his father's face, but he refused, not because that would be an awful thing to do, but because he'd had enough punishment for one night.

Frost retired to his room, throwing himself onto his freshly-made bed, throwing the blankets and sheets into disarray. He squirmed around for a bit, trying to get comfortable.

"Too firm," he said. Seconds later, the bed softened underneath him to better accommodate his form.

His father had neglected to cancel Frost's delivery, so a small buzzing robot deposited the toy laser gun he had ordered onto his pillow, right next to Frost's head. Frost quietly thanked the machine, before going to work on the gadget. Frost had little use for a toy gun, besides as a base that he could modify into a real weapon. He snatched the robot out of the air, and began deftly disassembling it, along with the gun itself. Soon, the gun was no longer a useless plaything, but a real weapon. Frost tucked it underneath his pillow, as he looked up at the ceiling with a sigh.

Frost wanted to resist and stay up as long as possible, but the soft, smooth music that the speakers started pumping into his room along with the sweet scent of wild flowers ensured that was an impossibility.

The sound and scent made his head swirl, and before he drifted into an intense, peaceful sleep, he let his mind wander, and took some time to contemplate. Frost came to the conclusion, while delving through his thoughts, that he had very few of them. He was young and therefore empty-headed, but also insightful enough to realize that he was so. His entire life was just a string of desires, eat, sleep, buy, with no overarching philosophy or goal to make it all mean anything. Frost shrugged, certain that he'd have plenty of time to figure it all out.

His father had plenty of purpose, though. He wanted peace throughout the universe, and an end to the suffering of all the innocent beings of all the planets in existence. Frost simply couldn't understand the appeal of that goal, however. To him, trying to create peace in the universe was like trying to cover a gushing wound with a single string. His father would've hated him for thinking this, but the enemies he fought had a more sensible goal, if not a more noble one. Heroism was a continuous process, villainy and destruction were permanent.

Frost awoke the next morning, stretching his tiny arms towards the artificial sunlight that the monitor on his ceiling produced.

He rubbed his eyes as he stumbled from his room into the kitchen of his spaceship. As usual, he was greeted by his morning stack of space pancakes, and a glass of space milk, to "strengthen his bones," as his father was fond of reminding him.

His father was wearing his battle suit, which wasn't unusual, but he also had his sword strapped to his back, an enormous weapon, even compared to the hulking body of Frigor's second form, with a glassy black blade.

"Eat quickly," his father said. "My assignment came sooner than I thought. There's a group of pirates raiding Planet Vanill, and by the sounds of it, they don't have much time."

He paused. "I didn't go back on what I said last night. I want you to come with me. Don't worry, you'll be safe. Your old man can handle a group of pirates."

Just to spite his father, he took ponderous, miniscule bites out of his pancakes. And, he didn't so much drink his milk as gurgle with it, so the amount of milk in the glass didn't change, no matter how many times he brought it up to his lips.

His father saw through this childish act of rebellion after a minute, and he snatched the plate and glass from his son.

"You can eat on the way there," he said. "Now, come with me."

Frost could've gotten away with eating slowly, but not lingering behind while his father got into his pod. He figured, however, that he had enough time to go back to his room and take the newly-created pistol from underneath his pillow. After retrieving his weapon, he followed diligently behind, and got into his pod beside his father's, as the two launched off towards the surface of Planet Vanill simultaneously.

They landed before long, onto the rocky surface of Planet Vanill. Frigor erupted from his pod with a warrior's roar, alerting the pirates around him of his presence, while Frost let out a meager yawn, slowly pulling himself out of his pod and onto his feet.

They had landed in the thick of things, and Frigor's cry had drawn the pirate's attention away from the Vanillian natives they were robbing and brutalizing, and to the enormous Arcosian who was purposefully drawing his obsidian sword.

The pirates seemed to be made up of the same species, as they were all green-skinned, serpentine bipeds, with large frills on the top of their heads and fangs that dripped a foul-smelling, noxious purple fluid. They all wore light, loose-fitting armor, that appeared to be cobbled together from scrap, with energy blasters that radiated with unstable red energy.

The Vanillians scattered away as their tormentors were distracted by the sight of Frigor. Frigor was, to the menagerie of slime and villainy that occupied the galaxy, a sort of heroic terror, a valiant nightmare, a benign boogeyman. His presence struck true terror in them, just they struck terror into the innocents they abused. They were afraid, because they knew their misdeeds would no longer go unpunished.

"Stay close to me," Frigor said, extending his two fingers towards his son, forming a purple bubble of energy around him. "This will protect you, I doubt these wretches will be able to pierce it, but, if anything goes wrong, run back to your pod, and leave me behind."

Frost nodded, it sounded like a good plan.

"Hey, it's friggin' Frigor!" one of the pirates shouted.

"Yeah, I know! Maybe keep your voice down, dumbass, so he doesn't fucking kill us all!" another replied.

"Don't worry," Frigor said, taking heavy, laborious steps towards the pirates. "Whether or not you had chosen to speak up, your fates were sealed from the moment you chose to take the lives of innocents and torment the helpless."

"Hey, fuck you, old man!" a third pirate shouted, clumsily firing his blaster at Frigor with an ear-splitting sound. It launched an unstable, shifting blob of reddish energy at the Arcosian. Frigor casually raised his sword, and swung it through the air, deflecting the blast harmlessly into the ground in front of him.

"Please, try not to swear, my son is here." he said coolly.

Frigor wasted no time following up on the deflecting, moving so fast towards the pirate that fired on him that Frost couldn't help but chuckle at the fact that his father wanted him at his side the whole time. Frigor swung his sword, effortlessly cleaving the pirate in two. Frigor's sword was so sharply, and he was so skilled with the blade, that swinging it in front of him would've been equally difficult whether or not the pirate's body had been there. He charged towards another pirate, slicing him into thirds. Frigor was not one to waste time when in combat, so while he was cutting the one pirate with his sword, he pointed his free hand towards another, firing a death beam that collided with the energy blast the pirate was firing at him. The death beam overcame the pirate's blast, striking him in the chest and making him fall over.

Frost sighed, squatting down, and bringing a small pebble into his bubble, which he tossed up and down before smashing it into powder in his fist. Then, he did the same to another nearby pebble.

Frigor disassembled the pirates with the same efficiency he used to make pancakes every morning, until every pirate within his sight was either dead, or fleeing, dropping his weapons and making a silent vow to abandon their life of crime for something more wholesome.

Well, perhaps not all of the pirates. One still remained, or rather, one just arrived. The leader of the pirates, a real vile creature named Jak, was alerted to how many of his men were being slaughtered and knew that there was only one creature who could've done it.

"Blimey, is it really you?" Jak said. Jak was significantly larger and bulkier than his men, almost matching Frigor in terms of stature. Instead of a small blaster, he carried an enormous energy cannon, attached to a humming power battery strapped to his crooked, lumpy back. His entire body was covered in large, tumorous bulges that made his armor unable to fit him properly.

"Yes," Frigor said. "And I take it you're the leader of these scoundrels?"

"Guilty as charged," Jak said.

"You're guilty of far more than that," Frigor replied, grinning to himself momentarily.

"Oh, I know," Jak said. "All the murdering, the robbery, the arson. All the men, women and children I've killed. I'm the lowest of the low."

Frost was distracted from playing with his rocks, as he turned to face the source of those intriguingly horrific words. He stared at Jak, wide-eyed, wondering what he would say next.

Frigor clenched his teeth, and the hilt of his sword. "I want to know, why? Why do you feel compelled to do such things to these innocent beings?"

Jak cackled. The sound was horrific, and his twisted face made it look like he was in pain, although, with the tumors packed tightly around his neck, laughing may have actually caused him discomfort.

"Come on, don't pretend like I'm the first bad guy you've fought. I'm not any different, we're all the same, the whole lot of us. We all do it for the money."

"I know, but that doesn't explain All throughout the galaxy, there are extremely wealthy beings, who haven't taken a single life…"

Jak laughed again. "You're a fucking riot, man. You really think all those space billionaires haven't done anything bad? They're probably worse than me! How many people have they exploited on their way up? How many planets have they ruined? At least I'm honest about the fact that I'm a monster!"

Frigor conceded to Jak's point with a barely audible "fine."

"I have one last question, before we engage in combat." Frigor said.

"Shoot," Jak replied.

"What is it about money that makes this all worth it to you? What can you buy that could possibly make up for seeing the pain in an innocent living creature's eyes as you torture them?"

"You really don't get it, do you," Jak said. "It's not about using the money to buy anything, no. Money and power aren't the means, they're the end. If it meant seeing the number in my bank account go up one more digit, I'd condemn every living thing in the universe to the most horrific death imaginable. Money is power, power is absolute, and power is meaning in itself. Anyways, can we cut the philosophical discussion? Cause while we were talking, I charged up my energy cannon completely, and I'm reaaaaaal eager to try it out."

Frost wished that Jak would keep talking, as he felt like, for the first time, someone was telling the truth. His father claimed to love peace, but the dismembered bodies around him suggested otherwise. Jak was a monster, but he was an honest monster, and in that way, he was the most pure person that Frost had ever known.

Frost assumed that the only reason that his father hadn't brought him on a mission before was to keep him from the truth that these so-called villains casually exposed.

"Oh, I suspected you'd charge up your cannon against me." Frigor said. "And that's why I was building up a blast of my own!"

Jak's cannon erupted with a burning stream of white-hot energy, while Frigor released his own attack, the terrifying Justice Ball. He fired an orb of red energy from his fingertip, surrounded by excess energy that flickered and arced across its surface like electricity. Jak's cannon was no match for Frigor's technique, which could, under the right circumstances, destroy planets.

The ball tore through his beam, until there was no more beam left, and it struck Jak directly. It exploded on impact, obliterating him, along with the ground he was standing on and cutting short a lifetime of misdeeds and atrocities. Not a single atom of Jak was left in existence, and the only thing to mark his memory was the steaming, hissing crater over where he once stood.

Frigor took a deep breath. He turned to his son, although he didn't need to, he had been glancing back at him to see if he was okay for the entire battle.

"I've done my part, the rest of my Peace Force will clean up this mess in a few minutes. Let's go home."

Frost nodded, as the bubble around him dissipated. He followed behind his father, making sure not to look him in the eyes, and risk showing him the evil enlightenment that now burned inside of his soul. He was very young, and he had never put any thought into how the universe worked before, or what his purpose in life would be. His father's goal of universal peace always struck him as meaningless, and now, he knew why.

His father arrived at his space pod. He placed his sword again it, as he tried to squeeze his titanic body inside.

Frost closed his eyes, and in the silence of his pod, he made a promise to himself: he would kill his father, and take over the Peace Force after his death, because in his mind, his father represented the greatest possible threat to how Frost now thought the universe should be.

Frost already had a method in mind. He had extracted some poison from the fangs of the pirates his father had killed, and placed it in a small glass vial. He brought it into the kitchen once they arrived at the spaceship.

He began brewing a cup of tea, just how his father usually liked it, completely black, without a trace of cream or sweetness, unlike the man himself.

"Here," Frost said, shoving the steaming mug against his father's chest as he entered. "I'm sorry for how I acted yesterday, I hope this helps."

His father smiled. "I was never mad at you, but thank you, I needed a cup of coffee anyways."

He took a sip, and then, drank the whole cup down, causing his knees to wobble as he placed a hand to his forehead.

"A-ah, that battle must've taken a lot out of me. I should get some rest. Goodnight, son." he said, stumbling towards his room.

Frost continued his poisoning strategy for several days, with his father getting weaker and weaker with each drink he took. Throughout the process, he never seemed to suspect Frost, thanking him for each cup of poisoned coffee or tea he offered, and brushing off his sickness as some sort of infection from one of the planets he had visited.

Eventually, Frost grew bored of watching his father decay. He wasn't a sadist, he just wanted him gone. If he wanted him dead coldly and quickly, he'd have to take a more direct approach. His father was no doubt in his bedroom, trying to sleep off the "infection" that was slowly eating away at his life.

Frost burst into his father's room, and grabbed his father's sword from beside his bed, and then in the same motion, grabbed the blaster he kept at his side.

"Bang, bang bang bang!" he screamed in his childish, high-pitched voice, as he squeezed the trigger on his gun over and over, blasting his father's face with high-powered beams of energy. Just like his father, he made sure to follow through on his attack. His father's blade may have been huge, but whatever it was made from was deceptively lightweight. Frost swung it with ease, lodging it in his father's shoulder. His veins and his mind was filled with hot, bubbling venom, and it felt as though it was that corrupting venom that was moving his muscles to fire his gun and strike with his sword, and not Frost himself.

"You're stupid, old man!" he said. "But I'm smart, smarter than you! I've got it all figured out! The universe moves towards entropy and destruction, right? That's what you taught me in all those useless fucking science lessons. So the natural way of reality is to annihilate. The purpose of life is to kill, and to make money, because money is raw destruction given numerical value, right? Anything to do with love, or goodness, or peace, is just standing in the way. You're standing in the way, father."

All throughout his rambling verbal declarations, he struck his father, alternating between blaster and blade.

Frigor did not resist, nor did he even react, for he believed within his heart that his son would be unable to kill him, until he did.

Frost let his father's body collapse uselessly to the ground.

He made sure to tell the Peace Force that his father was dead as soon as possible. His father's close friend was promoted to its new leader, but it was agreed that Frost would be put in charge once he reached an appropriate age.

The Peace Force wasn't the only group with a vacancy, however. The pirates were in need of a new leader, and unlike the peace force, they weren't as concerned with silly details like age. Frigor had killed Jak, and Frost had killed Frigor, it only made sense that he was their new captain. His first order as captain was for the pirates to go to Vanill's neighboring planet, Chaco, and obliterate everything around them, and to pillage anything valuable that remained. The more depraved and cruel their methods were, and the more innocent their targets, the better. Frost show that they could be just as wanton as before, if not more, with a leadership change.

Frost reminisced about these events, as he stared out the window of his ship. It was his birthday, and today was the day he would be given control of the Peace Force.

He thought back to the rambling speech he had given as he slayed his father, and the fact that he was unable to understand the words he had said in that moment until now.

And, once he finally understood what he had meant, he realized that he disagreed with them.

Both good and evil had a place in the universe. And now, Frost was in charge of both, and he had a plan for them that would make him a hell of a lot of money.

He swirled his glass of wine in his hand, looking at all the distant stars that dotted the void in front of him. This was the best birthday he could've asked for.


End file.
